The Anglo-American Café, Bourke Street, C.1915
James (Iakovos) Sigalas established an Anglo-American Café in both Melbourne and Adelaide in the opening years of the twentieth century; he also built and operated a two-storey kiosk on the pier at Glenelg, a popular seaside suburb of Adelaide. At first, the ‘cafés’ almost certainly operated as oyster saloons featuring ‘American-style’ confectionery, milk chocolate and ice cream. With the introduction of the American soda fountain, they became soda/sundae ‘parlors’ and later developed into cafés/milk bars. In the mid-1950s, the Melbourne enterprise was transformed into the famous Legend Café. Both Anglo-Americans are significant as they may be the first undisguised instance of the marriage between British-Australian tastes and American influences undertaken by a Greek food caterer in Australia. Interestingly, although Ithacan Greeks numerically dominated Victoria’s early Greek café’s, Sigalas was from the Cycladic island of Sikinos.
George Divolis, who managed the Melbourne establishment and was Sigalas’ brother-in-law, is standing in the doorway.